


reification

by bookhobbit



Category: Leverage
Genre: Bisexual Character, Cissexism, Friendship, Gen, Nonbinary Character, Queer Themes, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 11:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3808642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhobbit/pseuds/bookhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Eliot Spencer is not who he was supposed to be, and maybe that’s okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	reification

**Author's Note:**

> Guesss who watched Leverage and has entirely too many queer headcanons! Here are some of them. I didn't mention it in the tags, but there's a passing reference to ace!Parker and pan!Hardison. One day I'm gonna write ot3 fic but for now, have this.
> 
> Major cw for heterosexism and cissexism and bad parents and the word queer used as a slur in the first section. If you want to read it anyway but don’t want to deal with that, ctrl+f the phrase “laugh about that” and after that you should be okay.
> 
> Thanks to c-has-a-blog on tumblr for helping me out with this a lot!

Eliot spends a long time trying to be the man people think he should be. Son. Boyfriend. Soldier. The weight of people's expectations drags him down and shapes him and changes him, but never enough to fix him.

The fight with his father is about expectations in various forms, and Eliot knows then and there that he has to get out or he will never be his own person. So he's expecting a confrontation, eventually; he's expecting the summer after graduation to end in sparks, because he's not going to spend the whole time working for his dad without some sort of incident. They don't blend well anymore.

When his dad starts haranguing him about the usual stuff, he's not surprised. He sits and endures it, just sullenly silent. The usual stuff about family and responsibility and the fact that he's got to take over the shop one day or it'll close. Eliot doesn't know why his sister couldn't run it, except that she probably has even less interest than he does, but he suspects that's not his father's main point.

At first it's not too hard. This is a fight they've had a dozen times over the past few years. Eliot has learned the right parts to tune out, the right ways of making eye contact. It's sort of like rolling with the punches in a fight. You loosen up and let it happen. He doesn't make his early mistakes, such as talking about what he actually wants to do, he just looks suitably contrite at the appropriate times while his attention wanders.

Except then there's a kick to the gut, totally out of left field. Unexpected ammunition. Namely, the makeup he'd bought last week.

It had been a stupid impulse. Even at the time he hadn't been sure exactly what he'd been planning. It's just - football stars do this, sons of hardware store owners don't do that, there are so many rules and for just one second he broke them and everything clicked into place and it was all right. For one second, it was all right.

He'd tried them on that night with shaking hands and dim illumination. The result was...not inspiring, even by the half-light of his bedside lamp, but he'd been pretty sure it could get better with practice, and maybe he could watch Aimee sometime when he was hanging out at her house. He'd thought he could keep it a secret for a while longer, at the very least.

"What the hell is this," says his father, laying it on the table.

Eliot's heart's in his mouth. "Present for Aimee," he tries, but he knows he's not looking his dad in the eye, and he can't quite make himself.

"Yeah? This her shade?" He brandishes the lipstick. "How come you know that, boy?" His father leans across the table. "What kind of man knows that? You buy your girlfriend a present, it's flowers, candy, jewelry. Not something like this."

Eliot swallows, but stay silent.

"What do you have it for?"

"I don't know, sir."

His father's eyes narrow.

"You don't know."

"No." Eliot still can't look up, so instead he focuses on the little tubes lying on the table. They look so innocent, just little sticks of pigment in plastic containers, nothing dangerous.

His father's voice cuts through again. "You don't know. What are you, some kind of queer?"

"No, sir," says Eliot, almost whispering. He hates this. He wants to stand up and look his father in the eye and say, yes, I am, and what are you going to do about that, but he's been dreading this too long and he's concentrating on not throwing up or crying or something, which would just make it worse.

"My own son," says his father disgustedly. He grabs the makeup off the table and throws it in the trash. "No more of that, you hear? Not if you want to live under my roof."

"And what if I don't," says Eliot quietly, finally finding his voice. His father goes still.

"Excuse me?" he says, eyes narrowing.

"What if I don't? Want to live under your roof?" Eliot stands up. "What if I don't want to take over your hole-in-the-wall hardware store or live in this backwards little town forever? What if I want to do something instead of wasting my life like you have?"

His father's eyes close for a moment, and then open again, which means it's pretty much over for Eliot.

"After all I've done for you," says his father, quiet and dangerous. "You dare speak to me like this?"

"What have you done for me?" Eliot doesn't look away. His heart his pounding and his mouth is dry, but if he's going down, he's going to remember. "Raised me, put a roof over my head, given me food - yeah. But what's all that worth if you don't let me live my life?"

His father gapes. "Your life! What about my life? What about the store? What about your sister, hmm? Don't you have any sense of duty?"

"Not to you. Not anymore. Not after- "

"Then go!"

Eliot pauses, not sure what he means.

"Go! If you don't want to live under my roof, get out!"

"Fine." Eliot takes a deep breath, stomps over to his room, throws as much stuff as he can in his backpack, and walks out the door. His sister watches him go through the window. He almost stops to wave goodbye to her but he doesn't want dad to get after her too, so instead he just keeps going. He hopes Mom will take care of her. He hopes she turns out better than he did.

He heads to the nearest army recruiting station because what else do you do when you're eighteen and from nowhere and you don't have any money or time to develop skills? He wants to change the world and this seems like the best way.

He doesn't know he'll laugh about that later.

 

It's sort of okay for a while, because he can distract himself by pretending he's doing the right thing, and there are people around him he doesn't want to disappoint, and they're friends and - well, but sometimes there's still that nagging sense that something's _off_. Sometimes he has to stop and catch his breath because there's a moment of sudden clarity, like the sun breaking through the clouds, that this doesn't feel right.

It's...people here more than ever look at Eliot and his skillset and his appearance and assume he's ultra-masculine and a man's man and everything that entails, but it's just wrong, sometimes. It just feels like they're seeing a version of him that doesn't exist. He's thought a lot about it since that night. He's still no closer to having words for it.

In his bunk at night, or on the ground at twilight fitfully trying to sleep, or on patrol in the middle of the day, he tells himself it's okay and he shouldn't care. He's a man, right? He thinks about if, maybe, he's a woman, because he's heard about some people, but that doesn't quite fit either. Maybe it's habit but the idea of being 'she' doesn't slip on easily either.

So he tries hard not to think about it too much, just as he tries hard not to think about the argument with his father, the words he'd used. Which, he supposes, means the old man won. He hasn't escaped those expectations. They're just from different people now. He tries to bury the wrongness, tries to bury his high school crush on a teammate when it should have been on a cheerleader, tries to pretend it's all in the past. Aimee helps; sometimes she writes and sometimes when he's around her he can be what he's supposed to be. It feels like, even if it's not always easy, there's maybe a point to it.

Sometimes he thinks about telling her but it never happens. He doesn't want to disappoint someone else.

Mostly, he spends a lot of time thinking about other stuff, and he counts himself lucky.

 

In the end, the army does have this advantage: it teaches him that wanting men and feeling wrong about being one are two different things. For a long while he'd been wondering if maybe they were related, like maybe the gender stuff was some kind of manifestation of that, but it doesn't seem like it is.

Eliot starts spending a lot of time in the corners where men who have sex with other men tend to hang out. It's hard because they have to be furtive and hard to find in order to survive, and Eliot doesn't participate because he really doesn't want to hurt Aimee. But he finds them, nonetheless. He hangs around the right bars and keeps his ears open and his mouth shut. It helps, actually. He learns the word _bisexual_ somewhere and, although he never uses it to describe himself because it's just not safe, he keeps it close.

Sometimes, late at night when the booze has been flowing, he talks to the others, about the wrongness, about the sense of disquiet. In the vaguest most abstract terms, of course. As distant from himself as possible: _I got a buddy who thinks_ and _someone I know says_. He can't shake the feeling that they know, but he's good at obfuscation, and he only ever brings it up when the conversation drifts that way.

It doesn't ring any bells with most of the people he talks to. There's one guy, though - he admits something like _I know a guy_ and Eliot's pretty sure that's code in the same way his _I got a buddy_ is.

They don't talk about it except for that one time, and Eliot's still not sure he understood right. Maybe it is just him after all. That's...not comforting, admittedly. But it does convince him more than ever that he needs to get rid of it.

By the time he gets out, he thinks he's almost succeeded.

 

A lot happens just around then. A lot of it is not worth committing to memory. He leaves the army, Aimee leaves him, he sort of starts leaving himself behind. For a long time, he just buries everything under 'weapon'. Maybe he's failed his family, his country, and his own ideals, but there are things he can still try not to be. Things that it is dangerous to be.

Feeling is a risk, he realizes. Stopping isn't so much a conscious decision as it is involuntary self-preservation.

There's only so many times you can stomp down something before it stops getting up. Eliot doesn't quite know who he is anymore, but he doesn't quite manage to care about it, so it's all right. He's not dead and he's never quite alive and there are worse ways to exist. When you're ignoring everything that is wrong, when you suppress that down to a tiny voice somewhere inside your head, one more discordant note is hard to hear.

 

It's supposed to take two minutes, max.

The old man in the kitchen isn't supposed to peer over at Eliot, raise an eyebrow, and say, "Well? What's all this?"

Eliot can't exactly say _recon_ , so he shrugs.

"You here to order? It's late, but I can get something going. You look pretty rough."

Eliot has to resist the urge to look down at himself. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, about clearing out, but instead he says: "Whatcha got?"

The answer is apparently leftover stoverij and three hours' worth of conversation. Eliot talks about things he hasn't thought about in years. There's something about the man's quietness, his way of listening, that makes you open up.

"Can you cook?" asks Toby at the end of the night. Eliot shrugs. "Little bit."

"I'll teach you to cook _well_. If you like. You've got potential, I think."

Eliot blinks. He really should refuse. He has a job and it won't fit into his skillset. Granted, he can use a knife pretty well, but… People like him aren't supposed to do things like this.

"Okay," he says, pushing his bowl away. "I'd like that."

 

He's not sure what it is supposed to be. What it turns into... _Spring_ would be an overstatement. Nothing so dramatic. But it turns into remembering that he can create, that his hands are not meant only to end things. He starts piecing himself together again, fragment by fragment. It's slow, and he isn't aware it's happening until it's well underway, but, well.

Somewhere underneath 'weapon' there is a person. Cooking lessons turn into an excavation.

 

"I'm thinking about going into retrievals full time," he tells Toby months later, over a roux he's keeping a close eye on.

"Retrieving what?" Toby asks.

Eliot shrugs. "Anything. Independant contractor, you know? I...don't want to go back to PMCs. I think I'm done with that."

Toby seems to consider this. "I think that's wise. So you'll be stealing back stolen paintings, things like that."

"I guess. Anything that needs taken back. At least it won't mean - " He pauses.

"Killing people," says Toby succinctly.

Eliot nods. This is getting a bit personal, but there's something about the kitchen, as the first night had proven.

Toby smiles. "A good plan. You're sure you won't consider opening a restaurant instead?"

Eliot smiles back, and it's actually genuine. "No. I think I've gone a little too far in the opposite direction to start doing the honest citizen thing now. This is the best I can do."

"Hmm. Everything at its own pace."

 

It's an evening after the lessons are finished and he's back to his real job of mostly busting heads. Eliot stops at a drugstore on the way back to the hotel and makes a few purchases. He stares the cashier straight in the eye when he gets a questioning glance, and explains nothing. It's never done any good before.

The local library has computers, too, so he stops in and does some searching to find what he needs. It's at least better than high school, where there was no-one he could have asked; here, he can find all the information he needs without anyone being the wiser.

Then he goes back and sits down in front of the mirror and takes his purchases out of the bag. They don't look anymore dangerous than they did that night. But this time, at least, there's no-one he has to answer to.

He applies the makeup carefully, remembering what the tutorials had said. It feels clumsy and awkward at first; he's not used to using his hands this way, and also the sensation of something on his face is a little uncomfortable. The eyeliner and mascara especially are very tricky. He keeps poking himself in the eye. But he'll get better with practice. He's a fast learner.

Eliot looks at the result in the mirror and finds a face that's not his staring back at him.

He's been avoiding mirrors lately, because when you start to thaw you remember exactly where the bleeding was. He's had frostbite and he knows how much it hurts when sensation is starting to come back to your leg after it's been too cold for too long. It's just like that, only what he's coming back to isn't recovery and health. It's probably just the spiritual equivalent of gangrene. Eliot doesn't want to think about the bits you have to cut off to deal with that.

But the person in the mirror is someone else, someone who hasn't seen everything he has. They're familiar in a way, right, but different. Maybe a little bit more what he wants to be and a little bit less what he is.

It's still not safe to wear this anywhere else, but there can't be any harm in it when he's by himself. Nobody has to know.

He stares thoughtfully at the face in the mirror again. It would look better with long hair, he thinks. Eliot remembers all the crew-cuts on Moreau's men, remembers cropping his hair close when he joined the service, falling in line with people's expectations, hiding makeup in a sock under his bed.

It would look better with long hair.

He knows he won't need them for a while, but he buys hairties the next day at the same drugstore, as a promise to himself. If it seems silly, there are worse things to be.

 

It becomes a kind of ritual after difficult assignments, a reminder to himself of just why he's trying so hard to fight the downslide. Days when _man_ and _son_ and _sir_ feel like shards of glass driven into his palms aren't so hard when he knows there's somewhere safe to go afterwards, someplace he can work it out. Eliot is trying to develop a policy of honesty with himself, after such a long time spent ignoring it all, and he thinks about it a lot. Maybe it's wrong, but if so, it's probably the most minor in his laundry list of sins. So he's not entirely a man, and not entirely a woman; that cannot possibly be worse than the hired killer he's actually been. If he can come to terms with the latter - and he's working on it - the former should pose no trouble. It's weirdly comforting.

By the time Leverage rolls around, Eliot feels like he's at an equilibrium. He's not moving forward, it's true, and he's still fighting like hell against falling back, but there's a balance he feels he can maintain. He keeps up his policy after rough jobs, disappears to dress his wounds and be himself.

Trouble is, the team notices. The team _always_ notices. Admittedly, noticing is their job, but it's still annoying that they're so good at it when he's the target. He's not quite sure what they're thinking, but he knows they pick up on the patterns.

Hardison teases him about it, sometimes - "I guess you just have a busier social life than the rest of us" - and Eliot chafes back, all "I can't help it if you can't find a date to save your life, Hardison." He does not miss Hardison's sneaky glances towards Parker when this subject comes up. It's pretty funny.

Sometimes he almost wants them to ask, because that would make it real. Sometimes he wants them to stop seeing what they see when they look at him. It's not their fault, because he thinks maybe he cultivates this impression to keep himself safe, doesn't show the soft undersides to anyone because for so long that was so dangerous, so how could they know? He's spent a long time in places where being anything less than straight man is a death sentence, and "less" is the word in those circles.

So, even if they asked, he wouldn't tell them.

But he wants to, sometimes.

Parker comes the closest to getting the answer the earliest. One time when they're sitting there, waiting for the rest of the team to get into position so they can do their jobs, she asks: "Hey, how come you grew out your hair? Doesn't that make it hard to fight?"

He pauses for a moment. It's Parker; he can pretend to be caught off-guard by the subject change rather than, say, the fact that this is dangerous territory to tread. "Yours is longer than mine. Doesn't it make it hard for you to steal stuff?"

"I put mine up on the job half the time, so it's not really a big deal. Yours is down a lot even when you fight. Also, stealing stuff is mostly about not getting caught."

"Fair enough." Eliot shrugs. "Usually when I'm fighting, if I'm doing my job right, nobody gets close enough to grab my hair."

"You take 'em down before they get in."

"Right."

She considers. "That makes sense," she decides. "It still gets in your eyes, though. I notice."

"Yeah, well, when you're fighting you use a lot more than just your eyes."

"I guess it must work for you, because you're really good at your job, so whatever. But why'd you decide to grow it out in the first place?"

Eliot takes a slow breath to stall. He can't afford to talk about the real reasons, especially not on coms. But all the same…

"I got a lot of people out for my blood," he says. "Lots of people know my face, but they're used to seeing me with short hair. If it's long they're less likely to recognize me." It's not quite a lie and he thinks that's the closest to the truth he can get, right now.

Parker nods. "So it was a tactical move. For disguise."

"Something like that."

"Does it work?"

"I mean, I'm not dead."

Parker smiles. "It'd be cool if you were, though," she says, eyes brightening. "Ghost hitter. Hits people with his big ol' ghost fists. But you wouldn't even be able to eat your own food, which would suck."

"Yeah, it would," he says, and his shoulders relax a little. He doesn't think she notices, at the time.

 

Hardison is next. After the job with the fashion show he hangs around beyond wrap-up, watches everyone leave. When it's just him and Eliot, he clears his throat. "Listen, dude, I'm sorry about the eyeliner thing, okay? It was a dumb joke and I shouldn't have made it. Anytime you want to experiment with makeup or whatever I'll - "

" _What_ ," says Eliot through his teeth, tensing. Hardison raises his hands, and also his eyebrows. "Sorry, man," he says. "Nothing wrong with it. If you're not ready to talk about it or - or you're not comfortable with - " He stops.

Eliot doesn't say anything. He knows his stance is still closed-off and aggressive but he can't make himself relax; he feels hot and cold all at once, his stomach is churning, and he's choking with the sensation of _you have revealed too much_.

He realizes that Hardison is still watching him, concern in his eyes.

"You okay?" he says, gently. "You don't have to say anything. Seriously, I just wanted to apologize, 'cause it seems like it really got to you. I didn't want to let that stand."

Eliot breathes. Once. Twice. He's overreacting, he realizes, on the strength of a knee-jerk reaction developed over fifteen years ago. Hardison's not implying anything. It's okay. "And now you wanna hug it out, right?" he says, forcing the appropriate amount of sarcasm into his voice.

Hardison goes along with the distraction - intentionally, probably, but Eliot doesn't care. "Ain't nothing wrong with a little hugging. Good for the soul."

Eliot snorts, back on angry banter autopilot. "Yeah, whatever," he says, and heads towards the door. "I gotta get back home. See you."

"Right," says Hardison. "Hey, we cool?"

Eliot turns back around. Hardison's standing there smiling, arms raised slightly. People don't apologize for things like this, but Hardison just did. For the first time, it occurs to him that even if Hardison had figured it out, he might not have used it against him.

"Yeah," he says. "We're good. Don't hug me."

Hardison laughs, and grabs his coat. "Whatever you say, man." He breezes ahead of Eliot and out the door, and Eliot watches him go.

 

After Damien Moreau, he knows it's only a matter of time until he tells the two of them, because it's only a matter of time until one of them asks, and he's not going to lie to them.

It's Parker who does the asking but he gets the feeling they talked about it beforehand at some point, because Hardison's doing that concerned thing with his eyes and Parker keeps flicking her gaze back to him to make sure she's doing all right. It's funny that she looks to Hardison as the model of normal human social mores, considering how awkward he often is. On the other hand, Eliot himself has nothing to offer in that department, so maybe he should just stop that line of thought right there.

There's a studied casualness to the setup that he appreciates. The three of them are in the apartment above the brewpub, on what's supposed to be a movie day or something. Parker's sitting on the counter eating all the popcorn before they've even decided the movie, Hardison's futzing around with something involving one of his weird beers that Eliot will never admits are getting pretty good.

It is a setup, though. He knows one when he sees one. The subject could be anything but he has his suspicions. Hardison has been keeping tabs since the eyeliner incident, watching out for tender places; Eliot knows he's doing it to avoid bruising them, not to gather dirt, but it's still unnerving. Better to have it out in the open.

"Okay," he says, sitting down on the couch and facing them. "Ask me."

Hardison and Parker exchange a glance. "You don't have to answer anything you don't want to," she says, putting the bowl on the counter. "We just want you to be more comfortable."

"Ask me," he repeats.

Parker nods. "Are you genderqueer?" she asks. "Or nonbinary? Whichever word is your word, if one of them's your word."

Eliot considers the words. They're pretty good, all things considered. "Probably am," he says. "Not too familiar with the terms. Sounds right, though."

"It means you're not really a guy or a girl. Or you're both. Or sometimes you're one or sometimes you're the other."

"Okay. Then yes."

Parker nods again, and furrows her brow. "I'm not sure where the conversation's supposed to go after this," she says. "We just practiced this part. Was I too blunt?"

"Nope. I told you to ask me."

"Good." Parker looks at Hardison. "So…"

"So thanks for telling us," says Hardison. "And if we can do anything to make you more comfortable, let us know."

"Yeah."

There's silence for a few minutes. Eliot takes a breath, because he could leave it here, but he doesn't want to.

"I've never really had words for it," he says quietly, "not really. I just...knew I was different. That's part of...why I left. And then I just didn't deal with it for a while, y'know? But after Toby, I had to do something. I figured it probably wasn't just me, but… I don't know. I could have done research, but I didn't really feel like I needed it. So." He clears his throat. "Now you know."

"Well, if you ever want more words, I'm good at that," says Hardison. "I can find you, like, six different lists of gender identities in six seconds flat."

"He's really good," says Parker. "He found me the word 'asexual' without even looking."

"I already knew that one," says Hardison. "That doesn't count towards my amazing database prowess."

"It was still cool. It's a good word. Plus, he's really good at spreadsheets." She takes large handful of popcorn and shoves it in her mouth, making her next words somewhat muffled. "Do you want us to call you anything different?"

Eliot shakes his head. "Not right now," he says. "I'm good. Just. You wanted to know. I told you."

"Thanks for trusting us with that," says Hardison. "I know coming out is a big deal. It took me, like, a year to work up to telling my Nana I was pansexual. I thought I was gonna die. But she was cool, so that helped." He runs a hand across the back of his head. "Anyway, uh - if there's anything we can do -"

"Don't...don't tell Nate or Sophie?" Eliot says. "I'm not ready for that."

"No way, man. Never out someone without their consent." Hardison glances at Parker. "Right?"

"Other people's secrets are meant to be kept, unless they're bad guy secrets," Parker replies, and Eliot gets the sense that this is something they've talked about before, in the way Parker repeats the words. "Our secrets don't count as bad guy secrets. Even though we're bad guys."

"Right."

"I wouldn't tell them anyway," says Parker. "I know how it is when you're different and everyone hates you for it. And I wouldn't want you to deal with that. I don't want you to get hurt." She frowns. "I mean, I know you're the hitter and like, getting hit is your job, but you know. Emotionally hurt." She draws out emotionally like it's an echo of someone else's words. Eliot appreciates the effort it takes for her to say this, knowing how much he doesn't like to talk about it either.

Hardison rests a hand on her back just lightly. "That goes for me too. We're not gonna tell anyone. Anything else you need, you let us know."

"Yeah," says Parker, "And if anyone you tell is a jerk about it I'll steal all their stuff and make Hardison send them twenty viruses."

Hardison rolls his eyes and smiles. "That's her way of saying she cares."

"I know," says Eliot, and he is smiling too.

 

He cuts his hair late in the summer, because it's hot and it seems like a good idea at the time. It's the most impulsive thing he's done in a while but it's all right, because he has people who see him now, even without it. He'll miss it, but it'll grow back soon enough.

 

At Christmas that year he tells Nate and Sophie, because it seems like the most dangerous thing he can trust them with.

Sophie's understanding, although he's still not sure she won't use it against him; that's what she does, pries apart people's masks and slips into the cracks. But this is Trust for Christmas. If it didn't feel slightly inadvisable it probably wouldn't count.

Nate...is less of an asshole than expected. He raises his eyebrows a little but just says, "Thank you for trusting us, Eliot," and nods at him like he realizes how much of a big deal this must have been. So, that's nice.

Hardison and Parker glance at each other when he starts talking, and by apparently silent mutual agreement, Hardison reaches out to touch his leg gently under the table, not the way it sounds, just...support, or something, he supposes. He throws in a couple of details he didn't tell them, to make it real, because it doesn't count if they already know everything. Afterwards, they put their arms around him and take him up to the crashpad and make him cook them Christmas dinner, which he pretends to be annoyed about. Somewhat unsuccessfully pretends. Being real feels good.

Eliot Spencer is not the man he was supposed to be. He is the person he is, and there are people who love him for that.

Right now, that is enough.


End file.
